Traditional telephony services provided by digital switches, such as digital multiplexing switches, have reached their functional limits with existing user interfaces, which essentially are telephone sets having limited displays and simple keypads. Further, the telephone sets have limited bandwidth. Over newer packet networks, multimedia services are flourishing and are capable of exploiting the capabilities of advanced user terminals, desktop computers, and network appliances.
Currently, the vast majority of voice telephony is provided, at least in part, by traditional circuit-switched networks. Given the extensive infrastructure, reliability, and quality of service, the traditional telephony systems are likely to remain a significant part of communications for the foreseeable future. Unfortunately, there has been difficulty integrating voice sessions over the traditional telephony network with multimedia sessions over packet networks. Users prefer the traditional telephony network for voice, yet the voice network is unacceptable for facilitating advanced multimedia services, such as screen sharing and video conferencing.
The difficulties of integrating voice and multimedia sessions have, to some extent, been solved in commonly owned U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/028,510, filed Dec. 20, 2001, which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety. The applications to which this solution may be put are myriad. For example, many telecommunication service users are frustrated with automated attendants. In particular, a user may place a call and have the call answered by seemingly countless menus and prompts before they can talk to a real person. Thus, there is a need for an option that allows a user to use the multimedia capabilities of their communications equipment to help facilitate the navigation of automated attendants.